burden light for me.”
This ought to have touched me, and in a manner it did, but the wrong manner.
I felt I was behaving badly; and was now not only angry with Alan, but angry
with myself in the bargain; and it made me the more cruel.
“You asked me to speak,” said I. “Well, then, I will. You own yourself that
you have done me a disservice; I have had to swallow an affront: I have never
reproached you, I never named the thing till you did. And now you blame me,”
cried I, “because I cannae laugh and sing as if I was glad to be affronted. The
next thing will be that I’m to go down upon my knees and thank you for it! Ye
should think more of others, Alan Breck. If ye thought more of others, ye would
perhaps speak less about yourself; and when a friend that likes you very well has
passed over an offence without a word, you would be blithe to let it lie, instead
of making it a stick to break his back with. By your own way of it, it was you
that was to blame; then it shouldnae be you to seek the quarrel.”
“Aweel,” said Alan, “say nae mair.”
And we fell back into our former silence; and came to our journey’s end, and
supped, and lay down to sleep, without another word.
The gillie put us across Loch Rannoch in the dusk of the next day, and gave us
his opinion as to our best route. This was to get us up at once into the tops of the
mountains: to go round by a circuit, turning the heads of Glen Lyon, Glen
Lochay, and Glen Dochart, and come down upon the lowlands by Kippen and
the upper waters of the Forth. Alan was little pleased with a route which led us
through the country of his blood-foes, the Glenorchy Campbells. He objected
that by turning to the east, we should come almost at once among the Athole
Stewarts, a race of his own name and lineage, although following a different
chief, and come besides by a far easier and swifter way to the place whither we
were bound. But the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of Cluny’s scouts, had
good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in every
district, and alleging finally (as well as I could understand) that we should
nowhere be so little troubled as in a country of the Campbells.
Alan gave way at last, but with only half a heart. “It’s one of the dowiest
countries in Scotland,” said he. “There’s naething there that I ken, but heath, and
crows, and Campbells. But I see that ye’re a man of some penetration; and be it
as ye please!”
We set forth accordingly by this itinerary; and for the best part of three nights
travelled on eerie mountains and among the well-heads of wild rivers; often
buried in mist, almost continually blown and rained upon, and not once cheered